Meeting new challenges at home and abroad: liberal education's new premium

Liberal Education, Summer, 2006 by Barbara Lawton

IN JANUARY 2006, the New York Times headlined a new $3.75 billion federal initiative that would give $750 grants to low-income college students who successfully completed a "rigorous secondary school program of study" (Dillon 2006). These grants would increase for juniors and seniors with particular declared majors. We couldn't ask for higher-level acknowledgment that we're on the right track with Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) but, from my perspective as a top official in Wisconsin's executive branch, I argue that this quiet addition to the budget bill could well hobble our ability to meet and sustain the goals of the LEAP campaign in our state--and in yours.

As the vast majority of family-supporting jobs now require postsecondary training and education, children's aspirations for college are nearly universal. Low-income and minority students are likely, though, to fall into yawning achievement gaps, or stumble over tuition costs, or bump up against parents' anachronistic attitudes toward college and confusing protocols that keep them from matriculating--or convert them into attrition statistics.

That happens at no small expense to all of us. A 2000 Educational Testing Service study claims that if we were to increase the level of minority student participation in college to that of white students, we would create an additional $231 billion in gross domestic product and at least $80 billion in new tax revenues (Carnevale 2000). We have front row seats for a seismic shift from an industrial to a knowledge economy; we must find more ways to articulate the return on education, to assert the public value of a liberal education in an era of global competition.

A liberal education is quickly becoming the price of admission to a twenty-first century knowledge economy. A liberal education prepares students for the reality they will encounter and meets the needs of employers, and with its grounding in ethics and social responsibility, it prepares students to build a better world and deepens the nation's talent pool for innovation.

But more precise definitions of the essential outcomes of a liberal education for a student, state, and nation requires empowering the entire community to enter the debate. With broad commitment and bold leadership, this campaign can help inform how government and educational institutions evolve to support citizens' success in this time of flux, drive development of appropriate metrics to measure their effectiveness and assign responsibility for meeting those goals, and invite unprecedented partnerships to sustain them.

LEAP is a brilliant intervention at this critical moment. We talk a lot about affordability, access, graduation rates, and accountability; LEAP forces that conversation to merge with an examination of the kinds of learning today's college graduates need.

* It sidelines partisan rhetoric to focus public policy on the real engine for smart growth and development--an intellectually agile workforce functioning as an ethical, engaged citizenry.

* It responds to prevailing wisdom that business performance and national prosperity today depend on the creation and application of new knowledge, on our ability to innovate.

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* It reestablishes the value of the work of the academy in mining, maintaining, and building knowledge.

* It calls on the archetypal attributes of our nation's founders: creativity, innovation, risk taking, and entrepreneurship.

* It should trigger better understanding of how education policy from pre-kindergarten through grade twelve must be aligned in a continuum to support these goals, resulting in more cost-effective public investments. Think of LEAP as a powerful centrifugal force for necessary change.

* Finally, it builds on the strength of democracy and, with its implicit demand for unprecedented partnerships, reinforces our democratic system.

The challenges we face

Challenges lay ahead, notably the surprising lack of familiarity with the idea of a liberal education among so many students and their families. Added to this is a generalized distrust of all that is modified by the word "liberal." Too many students think of their college education as a private rather than public good, ignorant of the fact that the public and private sectors already underwrite a significant portion of the cost.

Other obstacles to hurdle are within the academy, where the self-referential language used often confounds would-be consumers and holds them at a distance. We can't build public confidence in higher education without giving the public a sense of fluency when speaking about it, without giving them a way to think about it and the words to support it.

Many academics' strong sense of responsibility for, and their comfort in, the tradition of liberal education translates into apprehension about "watering it down"--and is read by the public as persistent elitism. Academics are, reliably and responsibly, skeptical about confusing the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of profit. And in my experience, academic administrators and faculty too often struggle to articulate their own case for a liberal education, and are utterly naive about the political context in which they work.